


Fireworks

by whowhatsitwhich



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Headcanon, what i want, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whowhatsitwhich/pseuds/whowhatsitwhich
Summary: She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting on the stoop looking at that black gauzy column spiraling up into the too blue sky.





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> I found a quote I liked and wrote a thing. Usual disclaimers apply. I own nothing.

_“I threw myself into that fire, threw myself into it, into him, and let myself burn.” r13; Sarah J. Maas_

“What’s it gonna take?”

The gruff question in that so familiar voice pulled her out of her preoccupied study of the smoke rising above Alexandria. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting on the stoop looking at that black gauzy column spiraling up into the too blue sky.  Morgan had long since joined the queue encircling the three leaders.  They left in pairs, in groups as large as ten…fanning out across the settlement. Some looked after the wounded. Others made their way through the bodies, gruesome but necessarily making an end before they rose to add to the suffering. Many made a bedraggled line from the ornamental pond to where building still smoldered, filling buckets and stretching out long lengths of garden hoses to try to get the blaze under control. Upward, the black smoke climbed.

“Hey!”  The voice came again, tugging her back to the stoop and to a pair of worried eyes.  His fingers snapped under her nose.  “You with me, Carol?”

“I heard you,” she snapped and shook her head as if to clear it. “What’s what going to take?”

His hands enveloped hers, warm and calloused and gentle. “What’s it gonna take to make you stay put? I need you safe. Here or back at that little house, whichever you want for however long it takes until you feel like you again.”

Had she been standing, her knees would have buckled, dumping her into the dirt at his feet. Instead, her eyes wandered back to that gossamer pillar of smoke.   _Flicker. Flicker. Flicker._   Pictures glimmered before her eyes…Mika smiling at the deer. Lizzie crying in a field of yellow. Sophia, long limbed and doe eyed, nodding that she’d stay close. Beth lying in puddle of red, silent and still.  Everything swathed in delicate black.

One day, someday…that fire would go out or maybe she would. And black would fade into white…a ribbon slicing the sky in two, a scar to mark her passing.

Warm flannel under her cheek. Sweat and the coppery scent of blood filled her nose. An acrid bite of gunpowder and the softer stench of smoke as distant fires consumed everything they touched. A different touch that seared when his fingers slipped through her hair and then cupped her chin, forcing her eyes to finally meet his.

“What’s it gonna take, Carol? Answer me. I can’t…I won’t lose you too.”

Her heart was a stone lodged within her chest…the beats like thunder in her ears as she stared into those too blue eyes and was lost. She fell into them….all the way down. And there, she found her answer.  “Love me?”

It was the first true smile she’d seen from him in a life time, since before their world moved on. Before Virginia. Before Terminus. Before. “I already do.” His confession was the thinnest of whispers. 

Overhead…the smoke wafting from Alexandria faded to white.


End file.
